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Have you looked into the PTSD treatments that are in late stage FDA trials? I found them to be life saving for my PTSD.
They will probably be legal next year, but you can participate in a trial now.

Also - what would you tell a client? What question would you ask them/ ? You have accepted this - you say you are stuck, but you are only as stuck as you allow yourself to be. So if you are going to accept it, then ACCEPT IT. Go in a field, scream out all your last anger and fear, and let it go.

You have just one precious life. You know what the last 14 years were like. What do you want for the next 14?

Constant lying is the death of relationships. My dad was very damaged by his mother. His reaction to always being judged by her was to lie from a very young age. My mother divorced him because of it and my brother, as an adult, would have nothing to do with him. My relationship was superficial. It made us both(my brother and me) dedicated, hands on, truth telling parents. Lying erodes everything.
Please read LYING by Jonathan Wallace in the Ethical Spectacle

The component that stands out to me here seems to be the role a lack of choice may be playing in all of this.

If I understand you correctly, yours was an arranged marriage, yes? Though you may love her and she, you - I would think that there would always be an inherent question for each of you of - is this what you would have chosen if given the choice? You even stated that had you dated, you might not have married. While I don’t understand all the cultural values, I do recognize they are strong. The downside to cultural values is often the inability for the individual to actually question and integrate them (or discard them). We end up "believing" what we believe because it is what is expected of us. In a really strong culture we aren’t even permitted to question them. I could see that playing a role for both of you.

I can also see how this could play into your WW’s affair - and subsequently the contrast between what she wrote in text and what she tells you how she really felt. In that time of her affair, what could have been the biggest "aphrodisiac" was her own autonomy…her ability to control the choice (without actually MAKING a choice). It doesn’t make the affair any less wrong or hurtful…but it could explain the disconnect you’re having a hard time reconciling. She very well could be telling you the truth about her actual feelings toward the AP.

The most interesting aspect is your "stuckness" after 14 years. I wonder how much that lack of choice is a factor for you. You seem to understand that you DO have a choice that can be made…but - as in possibly the case it was for your wife - perhaps HAVING the choice while also not MAKING the choice is also serving you?

That choice could be to leave the marriage - or it could be to voluntarily commit (even, perhaps even especially, outside of the cultural expectations). It just seems to me that choice itself (the act of choosing) may be what needs to be reconciled.

Double post

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 8:08 PM, Sunday, May 22nd]

I don’t think you have PTSD… because the trauma you are experiencing isn’t "post"… it’s still going on right now.

Your wife is actively tormenting you. She knows that you know she is lying. She could easily put you out of this misery by being honest with you so you can move on. But she won’t because (from what you’ve described) it seems she enjoys from being able to withhold something from you that you’re desperate to have. She gets an added ego trip from being able to dupe an intelligent man who literally psychoanalyzes people for a living into deceiving himself.

I think if you separate from her, you will immediately experience relief because you will no longer be ingesting a daily dose of her poisonous lies. You will still need to recover from the damage that has been done, but at least the injuries will stop and recovery can begin.

Bump.

I did not read this thread the first time through, but since it has been bumped the following caught my eye. From Page 1 from [professional] on April 28, 2022.

It is also a bad idea to submit someone whom you suspect. It just destroys the trust that is not there already.

How can you destroy something that is not there? I could understand if you thought you were putting some sort of impediment in the way of building back trust by making her submit to a poly. However, you are stating again and again that she lies to herself and you. In that scenario -- what is left of trust to be destroyed?

Lack of trust, you are trusting her too much. A five night stay at a hotel has to involve sex. Lots of sex. You have to stop believing her story